Mail Sighs

[RNJudas]

So I built this mail server "Relay server" for a client...
(Perfecting a new concept xD)

And his support staff call me up and say... No one can send email! Everyone is being blocked as spam!


So I go and check the totals over the last 5 days...:

Total number of email that was relayed via server:
6530

Number of mails sent from server to the internet:
6486 - Accepted for delivery

Number of mails rejected by server before sending off to the internet:
44 Blocked

Total number of times other hosts have rejected mail from server email:
43

43 Given reasons why we have been blocked by other ISP's:
42# 5.1.1 - User unknown. Check recipient address
1# 550 - Relay rejected

Thats 0.006% of email has been blocked
And 99.994% Delivered.

Is it Monday? What am I doing wrong? I feel like I'm the only one

 

[Ipwn 4]

Many a mail server will accept your mail but will technically never deliver to someone's mailbox due to a spam filter holding on to it. This is usually case with very enterprise like spam filters that all mail to ensure they get scanned and can be recovered if mistaken for spam.

Usually when I see something like this on the scale you are experiencing it it is almost definitely not worth contacting the recipients and asking them to flag your relay as safe.

I am going to assume this is not the primary outgoing server for their domain? If this is the case setup a new domain (just add a hyphen into the old one or something stupid) and add "reply to" to the mails or let the relay handle replies and forward back back to the main mail server for their original domain.

If my assumption is correct their recipient's mail servers are seeing that they are receiving mail from 2 different servers and will assume the relay server is spoofing email address, due to this it will flag and hold the mail as spam.

 

[itareanlnotani]

Users are hideously bad at explaining things - bounced emails due to typos or other obvious issues (recipients mailbox full), are usually seen as - YOU DID THIS!!!!!!, vs its actually working 100%.

My suggestion -

Make the stats visible under a login page to the end user if possible - things like this can do it - http://mailgraph.schweikert.ch/
Also write an email explaining that it does seem to be working fine, and here are the stats that show it works well, and these are the reasons that the failed mails did not go through (and that its quite normal that a small percentage fail).

Even better if you can make that into an FAQ style page, then you can point the user(s) to it in future if they ask again.

 

[RNJudas]

I didnt expect to get feedback on this... But to be honest, its good to see there are still those keeping the torches burning

Thank you for the replies You just gave me an idea xD